JS in 2018
Javascript is everywhere
Trending #1 on stackoverflow and Github’s list of best programming language.
Here are a few reason’s why I believe its consistently at the top of the list.
1. Monopoly
Javascript is the only client side rendering language that browsers currently support. The likes of Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and a few others are trying to mix it up with WebAssembly but its a long time before that goes mainstream and until then javascript owns the browser.
2. Versatility
Along with being the undisputed king in client side languages, since the advent of Node JS (server side JS), javascript’s adoption has been steadily increasing on both fronts. It runs on both Desktops and Mobile phone browsers seamlessly.
3. Easy to use
Javascript is one of the, if not the easiest language ever. Its easy to read and write and you can achieve a lot with just a few lines of code. You can have a server up and running in less than 10 lines of code. It’s a dynamic and functional programming language so the learning curve is fairly simple.
4. Abundant Framework, libraries and modules
React, Angular, Vue, Jquery, D3, Express, Grunt, Lodash ….. There are a ton of frameworks and libraries and modules. There’s a NPM module to help you do possibly anything that you could think of but there’s a dark side of this too checkout this before you go about importing a module or library before knowing what it really does.
5. Other features
JavaScript is dynamic, functional and interpreted language and is platform independent. Its easy to read, write and test your programs in Javascript. Javascript also runs in an event loop and is asynchronous.
Here is a bonus list of things you could do with JS
Internet of things
Frameworks like Cyclon.js and IoT.js could help you with anything from a robotics competition to your next smart device hub powered by Raspberry Pi.
Data driven Documents and charts
Love interactive graphs over simple tabular graphs, D3.js is the library for you. D3.j helps you bring data to life using HTML, SVG, and CSS. chart.js helps you convert your data into upto 8 different types of interactive charts.
Moblie Apps
Want to create mobile apps but you don’t know JAVA or C# ?, Apache Cordova and Iconic helps you create a mobile app in Android and IOS with just HTML, CSS and javascript.
Gaming
With gaming frameworks like Phaser and Pixi create your next viral addictive or first person shooter game with Javascript.
Blockchain
Want to create your own blockchain for smart contracts ? Naivechain is a blockchain implementation written in less than 200 LoC and 100% in Javascript.
As you see there are a lot of things you could do and explore besides creating website’s in JS and that is why javascript has been trending over a few years.
If you liked this article follow me and stick around for more in depth articles of Javascript where I discuss about advanced concepts in JS and demo’s of a few library’s and frameworks.
Do consider supporting me by buying me a cup off coffee by clicking here.
You could also support me on Patreon by clicking here.
